Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate candidate, John Fetterman, on Friday, calling him a “stroke victim who was already crazy.”
During the opening segment of his show Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson compared Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running as the Republican candidate vying for the Senate seat, left vacant by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), to Fetterman, who serves as the Keystone State’s lieutenant governor. Oz, a medical doctor whose own television show ended in January, is trailing Fetterman by 18 percentage points.
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“Last night, we told you the sad and bewildering story of Dr. Oz, a man with absolutely everything going for him,” Carlson said in the video. “Talent, decency, charm, money, name recognition, all the right endorsements — who is nevertheless losing by a big margin as a Republican in what should be a Republican wave election to a radical and incompetent Democratic lieutenant governor who has presided over the decline of the state and who, by the way, also has had a stroke and can no longer speak in complete sentences. … Dr. Oz is getting crushed by a stroke victim who was already crazy.”
Brutal. Tucker Carlson tells “the sad and bewildering story of Dr. Oz”. “Dr. Oz is getting crushed by a stroke victim who was already crazy.” pic.twitter.com/nWPRKd7L3M
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) August 20, 2022
Fetterman, 53, had a stroke in May. He was off the campaign trail for three months as a result. The progressive Senate hopeful is continuing to work with a speech therapist as he recovers, but he finally returned to the trail at a rally last week.
Fetterman revealed at the Erie, Pennsylvania, event that he was struggling with some auditory processing problems from the stroke. However, he said his condition was improving.
“I’ll miss a word sometimes, or I might push two words together sometimes in a conversation, but that’s really the only issue, and it’s getting better and better every day,” Fetterman told the crowd.
Carlson credited Oz’s failings in the polls to the fact that he seemed out of touch with Pennsylvania voters. Carlson’s point was supported in a viral video that showed Oz talking about paying $20 for vegetables for “crudite” as an example of how much inflation was affecting people across America. However, Oz failed to notice that most working-class voters would not know what the word meant, and the video came off as elitist toward those who care more about rising crime rates in the state, according to Carlson.
“There are no bad candidates. There are just candidates who are running on the wrong things, candidates who are talking about issues that people don’t deeply care about,” the conservative commentator said. “A good candidate is a candidate who promises to fix the problems that voters worry about most. Candidates like that tend to win elections because the message is bigger than the man. A candidate with a powerful message can overcome virtually any obstacle, from multiple bankruptcies to universal media hostility to a dull orange skin tone. If voters believe you will make their lives better, they will vote for you. Period.”
“It’s not complicated.”
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Carlson’s observations came one day after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offered a not-so-veiled dig at the characters of the GOP candidates running for seats in his chamber. McConnell was speaking at the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Thursday when he said he believed Republicans could gain the majority in the House of Representatives, but was more hesitant on the Senate.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different,” McConnell said. “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”